WHAT WE DO

• Health and illness are determined largely by what we eat, drink and inhale and by where we live, work and shop.
  
  
• Seven of the 10 leading causes of premature death are from things that can be modified, if not prevented, by our actions.


• More than half of all American adults are living with at least one chronic condition that requires lifelong monitoring and managing — most of which takes place far from the doctor’s office.


• The benefits of the vast array of technological and pharmaceutical tools developed to diagnose and treat disease are dependent on the behaviors of individuals — doctors, nurses, health plan administrators, government regulators, and patients and their families — to make use of them at the right time and in the right way. We believe that a systematic, science-based focus on behavior is critical to capturing the value of health research and to improving the health of the nation.

This means removing the barriers and increasing the incentives for individuals to act in ways that promote health and prevent disease. It means working to improve the quality of health care through changing the behavior of health professionals. And it means ensuring that health decision-makers understand the behavioral implications — in addition to the economic and institutional implications — of policy options.

Working through the traditional news media, the blogosphere, the Internet, professional organizations and health care institutions, the Center for the Advancement of Health works to raise the visibility and priority of health behavior research in solving health care challenges.

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WHERE WE WERE

During its first decade, the Center focused on integrating evidence on health behavior into the practice of medicine, e.g., ensuring that health professionals effectively assist their patients with weight loss, making sure they make good use of technology and pharmaceuticals (e.g., get regular mammograms) and helping those with chronic diseases to better manage them at home. For example, the Center:

• Synthesized the scientific literature on interventions to improve patient self-management of diabetes, heart disease, asthma, depression and low back pain, smoking, diet, physical activity and alcohol use. Based on these findings, we produced a how-to guides for primary care practitioners and disseminated them nationally.



• Identified quality indicators that show whether a health plan is attending to the behavioral concerns of its members and passed findings to quality-monitoring groups.
  
  
• Surveyed managed care plans on the feasibility of implementing behavior change services such as smoking cessation and weight loss programs.


• Studied the willingness of employers and insurers to pay for delivery of evidence-based behavior change services.
  
  
• Worked with primary care professional societies to serve as advocates for effective behavior change services.


• Collaborated with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to develop large-scale demonstration projects to test the financing and provision of evidence-based approaches to health behavior change in health care delivery for older people.

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WHERE WE ARE

The Center for the Advancement of Health continues to serve as a communications hub for the growing number of researchers and practitioners concerned with the translation of health behavior research into effective practice. This commitment has been institutionalized through production of a daily news digest summarizing the news relevant to that aim and read by thousands of researchers and clinicians. The Center is also home to the Health Behavior News Service (HBNS), with global reach that operates like AP and Reuters (although for free) producing journalism about new systematic reviews relevant to individuals in making decisions about their health and health care. In 2006, HBNS produced more than 200 news stories, placing them in print, broadcast or Internet media more than 4,500 times. With a mission of expanding coverage globally, the News Service placed stories in media or on Web sites in 34 countries.

Among major world media using stories originated by the HBNS: Atlanta Journal Constitution, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, International Herald Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Melbourne News, New York Times, Times of London, Toronto Globe & Mail, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BBC, National Public Radio, Associated Press, Reuters, Parenting Magazine, Psychology Today, U.S. News & World Report and the Web sites of ABC News, CBS News, MSNBC and Fox News.

Documentation of the growing disparities in health among subgroups in this country has sparked the interest of public and private policy makers. But solutions are not immediately evident. The Center directs three different scholars programs, all of which have in common the aim of training young scientists who are working on understanding the impact of social, behavioral and economic factors on health and on facilitating the transfer of their knowledge to policy and practice. The Center’s particular interest is to ensure that their education includes practical experience with the federal and state policy processes and communities to better conduct research that is useful to decision-makers and advocates.

Scholars are currently attending:

• Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health
• Harvard School of Public Health
• Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health
• Morgan State University, Public Health
• University of California, San Francisco, Berkeley
• University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research
• University of Michigan School of Public Health
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health
• University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, Center for Minority Health
• University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Health Disparities Research Education and Training Consortium.

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WHERE WE ARE GOING

In the next decade, the Center plans to continue to expand the global reach of the Health Behavior News Service and support the development of the community of scholars and former scholars concerned with practical policy research on disparities in health. In addition, it will launch an initiative to support the positive participation of older people in their health and health care to augment the current trend to manage normal aging as a series of medical problems. And it will address the emerging demands on individuals to make complex decisions about health and health care resulting from the devolution of health care in this country.

The nation’s investment in high-technology biomedicine has produced remarkable scientific accomplishments, nurturing beliefs that health care services determine well-being and that medical advances will soon make the daily grind of staying healthy obsolete. Neither belief is valid.

We must adopt a systematic, evidence-driven approach to strengthening the critical link between the forces we know affect health and what we do about them in our daily lives. Because when it comes to the prevention, progression and management of disease, genes matter, access to health care services matters, drugs matter, but behavior really matters.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The following individuals have served on the Board of Trustees of the Center for the Advancement of Health. The individual’s affiliation dates to their time of service to the Center and is for informational purposes only.

Charles R. Halpern, Nathan Cummings Foundation
Andrea Kydd, Nathan Cummings Foundation
Michael Lerner, Commonweal
Daniel Goleman, Author
Denis Prager, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Leslie Scallett, Mental Health Policy Resource Center
Rosemary Stevens, University of Pennsylvania
John Rowe, Mount Sinai Hospital/Aetna
Nancy Adler, University of California
Beatrix Hamburg, William T. Grant Foundation
Philip R. Lee, US DHHS
Judith Rodin, Yale University
Claire Fagin, University of Pennsylvania
Delores L. Parron, US DHHS
Edward H. Wagner, Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound
Alan McGowan, AAAS
James Sabin, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care
John Pinney, Pinney Associates
Ellen Hume, Communications Consultant
Herbert Pardes, New York Presbyterian Hospital
William Novelli, AARP
John Seffrin, American Cancer Society
Thomas Schelling, University of Maryland
Stephen Thomas, University of Pittsburgh
Julius Richmond, Harvard Medical School
Saletta Boni, Organizational Consultant
Vanessa Northington Gamble, Tuskegee University
Judy Miller Jones, National Health Policy Forum
Robert Levine, MedHelp.com
Dean Robinson, University of Massachusetts
Douglas B. Kamerow, RTI
Carol Cronin, Consultant
Gail Hunt, National Alliance for Caregiving
Chris Gibbons, Johns Hopkins University
Maulik Joshi, Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement

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GRANTS AND GIFTS

1. What We Do
2. Then
3. Now
4. Future
5. Acknowledgements
6. Grants and Gifts